Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
